Introduction to Computing Applications in Forestry and Natural Resource Management

Jingxin Wang

• Éditeur: CRC Press
• Année: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351849333
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Informatica
• Sous-sujet: Data mining

Due to the complexity of operational forestry problems, computing applications are becoming pervasive in all aspects of forest and natural resource management. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to computers and their applications in forest and natural resource management and is designed for both undergraduate and graduate students in forestry and natural resources. It introduces state-of-the-art applications for several of the most important computer technologies in terms of data acquisition, data manipulation, basic programming techniques, and other related computer and Internet concepts and applications. This book consists of six parts and 19 chapters.

Section V

Visual Basic .NET Programming

12
Introduction to Visual Basic .NET Programming

Visual Basic (VB) is a third-generation event-driven programming language that was first released in 1991 for Microsoft (Microsoft Corporation 1998). It is possibly the fastest and easiest way to create applications for MS Windows. Designed to be both easy for beginners to learn and powerful for experts, VB uses an English-like syntax that promotes clarity and readability in combination with an extensive set of advanced features and a philosophy that emphasizes flexibility, productivity, and great tooling (Microsoft Corporation 2014). VB 6.0 was released in 1998 and was a popular programming language with many new features including web-based applications.

Succeeding VB 6.0, the first version of VB.NET was released in 2002. By 2016, eight versions of VB.NET had been released as components of Microsoft Visual Studio. VB.NET introduced many exciting new features to VB developers, though these enhancements have caused some minor compatibility issues with legacy code (Wakefield et al. 2001, McKeown 2010). The integrated development environment (IDE) (including code editing, debugging, and execution) incorporates some of the best ideas of VB 6.0 and InterDev (a user-friendly program development software) to make it easier and more intuitive to quickly create applications using a wider variety of development resources.

Possibly the most valuable addition to VB.NET is object-oriented programming (OOP). Although approximations of object orientation have been available in earlier versions of VB, only in VB.NET do developers gain the advantages of true object inheritance, which allows business logic to be more easily and reliably programmed through an object or a block of code (Wakefield et al. 2001).

12.1What Is Visual Basic?

According to Microsoft’s definition (Microsoft Corporation 1998), VB consists of two parts:

1. The “Visual” part refers to the method used to create the graphical user interface (GUI). Rather than writing numerous lines of code to describe the appearance and location of interface elements, you simply put prebuilt objects into place on screen.
2. The “Basic” part refers to the Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC) language. Notice that VB has evolved from its original BASIC language and now contains several hundred statements, functions, and key words, many of which relate directly to the Windows GUI.

There are programming languages derived from VB. Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in MS Word, Excel, and Access, and VB Script for web-based programming are applications or programming languages that use VB.

12.1.1Visual Basic and VB.NET Concepts

12.1.1.1Windows, Events, and Messages

It is necessary for us to have a better understanding of some of the key concepts VB has built. For any Windows application programs, VB employs three key concepts: windows, events, and messages (Microsoft Corporation 1998).

A window is a rec...